Wayward behavior of Trump, Manafort subordinates becoming a pattern

President Donald Trump, center, is flanked by White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman, left, and then-Housing and Urban Development Secretary-designate Ben Carson during a meeting at the White House, Feb. 1, 2017. Manigault Newman, who was fired in December, has released a new book "Unhinged," about her time in the White House. (Evan Vucci/AP, File)

WASHINGTON — Rick Gates is to political consultant Paul Manafort what Omarosa Manigault Newman is to President Donald Trump.

Gates is the 46-year-old former right-hand man to Manafort, who, in exchange for a lesser sentence, testified against his former boss during the first jury trial resulting from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Jury deliberations began Thursday morning.

The multiple tax and bank fraud charges Manafort faces have nothing to do with his short tenure as Trump’s campaign chairman. Nor do they have anything to do with Gates’ work on the Trump campaign that continued after Manafort’s departure.

They concern Manafort’s attempts to hide the tsunami of cash he made advising Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych through 2014 to avoid paying taxes and his efforts to procure million-dollar loans in 2015 and 2016 when the Ukraine money dried up.

Gates testified about his role in steering money into 31 overseas bank accounts, Manafort’s directives to hide income to avoid paying taxes, as well as Manafort’s pursuit of million-dollar loans when the foreign money ceased to flow.

Federal prosecutor Greg Andres summed up the case against the 69-year-old politico thus: “Mr. Manafort lied to keep more money when he had it, and he lied to get more money when he didn’t.”

Manigault Newman, of course, is the former contestant on Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice,” whose first name, Omarosa, became a household word before Trump hired her to a high-level White House position.

Chief of staff John Kelly fired Manigault Newman in December in the White House Situation Room — a dismissal she secretly recorded and aired last weekend to kick off the release of her tell-all memoir, “Unhinged,” which portrays the president as racist and addled.

Trump responded with multiple tweets in which he put down Manigault Newman as “vicious, but not smart,” “wacky” and a “dog.” Once again, Trump’s lack of self-control on social media boosted the profile of a C-list critic.

Trump’s Twitter tantrum also served to remind voters that he put his one-time protégé on the people’s payroll.

Likewise, when Manafort’s defense attorneys berated Gates as the lowest form of liar, many courtroom observers could not help but suspect that Manafort entrusted Gates to handle sensitive financial paperwork precisely because the big-spending political adviser expected his right-hand man to help him evade taxes and win approval for loans that banks otherwise could be expected to deny.

There are honest business people who have hired unscrupulous employees who betrayed them in unexpected ways. Maybe jurors will decide that Paul Manafort is one such person.

Unfortunately for Manafort and Trump, however, their staff choices gone wrong do not appear to have been flukes.

The president’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, also a target of the Mueller probe, secretly taped a 2016 conversation during which Trump and he discussed paying off a Playboy model who said she had an affair with the then-GOP nominee. Trump later complained on Twitter that it was “inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client.”

In May 2017, Trump himself hinted that he may have secretly audiotaped conversations with James Comey, whom he had just fired as FBI chief.

And Trump hired Manafort, whose attorneys are so deeply disappointed in the ethics of Rick Gates.

After a while, observers cannot help but notice that when watching the White House or the Manafort trial, the person pointing a finger at others should not have been shocked at subordinates’ wayward behavior. It’s not an accident. It’s a pattern.

“This is just another example that traditional respect for the rules that used to govern in the White House are just not there anymore. It’s not surprising to note that, like a number of other things in this administration, this is kind of unheard of.”

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Steve Holland: “There’s such a baby boom going on in the White House Press Corps that we are always on standby for delivering a baby if necessary.”
CBS’s Weijia Jiang. New York Post’s Marisa Schultz. The Washington Post’s Ashley Parker. Newsday’s Laura Figueroa.
They’re just a few of the White House correspondents who are with child or who recently gave birth.
Five more members of the White House Press Corps. delivered babies during Trump’s first two years: NPR’s Tamara Keith, CNN’s Pamela Brown, Fox News’ Kristin Fisher, CGTN’s Jessica Stone and NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe.
Others are shy of publicity or not yet showing.
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Then there’s the matter that being a political journalist is stressful, and, well, certain activities can help alleviate that stress.
Being pregnant in the White House briefing room definitely doesn’t make the job any easier, though.
There are just 49 seats – and it’s not as if competitors are quick to offer up their coveted chairs. At one point, Ronica Cleary tweeted she was “less than enthusiastic about the nature of a room full of people who avoid offering a seat to a woman who is 371/2 weeks pregnant.”
Even the press offices behind the press room are cramped.
With the baby boom, the Christian Broadcasting Network’s small office now doubles as a breast bumping room.
One journalist made headlines when she announced her pregnancy with an apparent jab at the president.
Weijia Jiang’s baby bump was showing at a September press conference.
When President Trump told her to “sit down,” she tweeted she couldn’t wait to teach her child that “when a man orders you to sit down because he doesn’t like what you’re saying, do anything but.”

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